


Eventually

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Office, M/M, honestly wtf is this, im just fucking stressed out and my parents r um, this is mainly a lance fic lol, welllll fighting again i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10821672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "But do you really want me to do this?" Shiro asked, his breath so heavy his shoulder pads almost lost shape. "There's no reason to, really.""Yes, I want you to do this," Lance said, words coming out inept and confusing, "I want you to fire me."Shiro squinted in bewilderment before planting his face in his hands.--In which Lance feels he is an incompetent employee, so incompetent that he doesn't deserve to walk out on a job.





	Eventually

There was never a problem that Lance Mcclain wouldn't have encountered when it came to enjoying work.

He worked at Universal Space Inquests (USI), which sounded like a dream when he was a struggling and poor college student. How couldn't it have? "Universal Space Inquests"– the possibilities were practically endless. Its commercial units were always full of spaceship campaigns, with people in zip-up suits trekking planets from galaxy to galaxy– so it could be open to space traveller-wannabes and skilled pilots. There were IT units that spent months researching and testing out alien technology and communicating with people from across different ends of the universe, and in Lance's timeframe, those very people had been so good at their damn job they were already sending coded nudes and universal memes. There were even science units that specialised in making drugs based off of supplements from asteroids, and sub-units that preferred observing and analysing biology, chemistry, and physics of objects and living spaces in outer space. There were even 'subcultures' of science– Jesus, what a lot to take in.

So yeah, sounded pretty cool to Lance. Made sense, right?

Right. Until he actually started working for the mess of a management firm.

The sad and unfortunate unit, that nobody really bothered to look into out of fear and disinterest, was the only one he had been accepted into.

Originally, he didn't mind this, and was almost even proud of it. The Universe Defence System unit, that was called 'Voltron' until a couple decades before Lance's admission, was one of the most underrated and overlooked units. It was supposedly so strong and required so much energy that the management almost went broke– not for trying to pay for the electricity fee, but rather for trying to pay the costly and environmental fees to pay off for resistors. Lance thought that this was hilarious, and from there, he told himself that he was meant for the team. At the time, the headquarter's huge (and likely oversized) ship was docked on a planet called 'Walters', a long way from Earth. Fascinatingly, it only took a single government-supervised escape pod that would launch him to whatever was a set destination– if he could pass. He was fit for its basic requirements, such as being able to fly through an asteroid-filled shitstorm whilst focusing more on outcome and not time, being able to calm a team down and set everyone on ground (show leadership qualities, as you do), and to not be overly carried away with personal issues regarding people out of reach. Sure, he wasn't an A-grade pilot, commander, or the most invulnerable with family matters, but he could handle these pretty well. It was anticipated that he would pass for it, and he did! Good for him, right?

No.

He expected to sit behind a panel controller, in a cockpit of alien bullshit he was ecstatic to have be explained to him. He expected to do flying drills into big empty pits of rock and sand or pounds of fresh snow, throwing himself gladly into the hands of danger for the sake of being ready to protect the universe he wanted to explore and witness endlessly, likely until the day he died. He wanted to be at risk often, and he even dared himself for the future that he would briefly taste the cold and tight oxygen-less air of space, free of armour or a helmet. He wanted to do this after being admitted into the Universe Defence System– guarded as one of the most hazardous and perilous units in USI known to man. Also dubbed the most fun by alumni– for some reason, all dead– of his college.

Instead, after being rudely introduced to his tiny studio apartment of a 'temporarily-permanent' (as they would call it) living space that was almost completely unfurnished aside from a bed and the inside of the bathroom, he was then lead to his doom. His complete loss in faith.

He would work at a desk.

A _motherfucking_ desk.

\--

Fast forward a couple of months, Lance was chowing down on food goo (that he despised) at his dreaded desk. The amount of paperwork he had gone through in one day was the same amount of work he would have gotten through in a college _month_. He groaned and looked at the note on the side of his desk, with messy words scribbled onto it in petite handwriting; "research best place to dock next. xo chief b – allura".

Trying to lie to himself and tell himself that he would totally not get explosive diarrhoea from assigned local food, Lance sat a little straighter to be able to see from above the walls of his cubicle the few other people in the UDS unit tapping away at their hologram screens or flipping through volumes of thick and namely prehistoric books that registered thousands of planets. And in his mind, there he was, eating dead-tier food and mourning over the death of his motivation.

His eyes turned first to the employee in the red-themed cubicle, owned by Keith Kogane, who had multiple evidence boards filling up his space, all of which were generally crowded and without initial clarification of the areas, no one could understand a thing. The red-themed cubicle was also fashioned with a lot of black, and fairy lights were hung around the top and off the sides. It was an ironic and endearing sight, with the man behind it all also quite soft-looking. Often, he was tasked to connect the dots between spy cases and affairs. More domestically, he was always the type to bring coffee to work in a personalised mug, and he was quite lazy with washing one after use. All in all, the guy seemed a bit tempered but also diligent. He was pretty special, and useful.

Then, Lance's eyes drifted to the cubicle closer to his own, which was green-themed, owned by Katherine Holt. The employee behind its walls also put up a crime-busting set up, but this time it was just a huge evidence board divided into little sections. She had a nightlight or two hung on her walls, and her table was crowded with miniature models of possible experiments and devices that could be important assets to the UDS. Her cubicle was the cleanest in the room, and it was also slightly smaller than everyone else's, although that did anything but bother her. She was typically holding the Walters' equivalent to Chinese takeout whilst watching a video demonstrating how blackholes worked, or something. She pretty much was anything but a slacker, although sometimes getting distracted with thoughts about family. Either way, she was pretty special and useful too.

Finally, he turned to see the ball of sunshine, Hunk Garett, sat at his vibrant yellow-themed cubicle. It was basically a storehouse for an engineering geek, decked with screwdrivers, universal spare parts of battleships and cars, tires, et cetera. Under the desk, Hunk kept a sleep fort that he would squeeze himself into whenever he was tired, and that was also where his cat Crescent lived. Usually, Hunk would be drinking a health juice or eating a fit bar, then proceeding to some random stretching. He was the buffest and most well-built in the room, although being the most modest about body strength. Hunk was also very talented in cooking, which would be Lance's lifeline on days where he felt like the radiant sun which was God's power had stopped shining on him. Hunk was frequently asked to fix the scaled-down versions of the colour coded ships, because they were very dated and needed repairs every few days. Again, special and useful.

Then Lance sat back down, and looked at his own cubicle.

It was empty on the most part, only full of paperwork and dual-monitor screens, and a picture of his family was the only thing stuck to his cork board other than a to-do list. It was a really sad thing, that he only had two items there, being that when he met this mess of a unit all sat at their desks typing up on an excel spreadsheet to solve mysteries and fight against crime, he was determined to fill up his board within a week or two. Instead, since he came in the beginning of September, all through winter to the end of February, those were the two articles that made it to be pinned. 

Lance sighed. He looked at the previous to-do lists that he had stored in one of his cupboards.

There were _tons_ of them. One for each week. Some for a day.

Most of them were filled with pretty useless beginner jobs, like to learn to work a flight with a simulator or to clean an escape pod. He didn't feel useless at the time, because he knew that all he was back then was a new member. Eventually, a month dragged on, and he started to get tasks that made him get paired up with Keith, because Lance was much better at communicating and finding fair ground with witnesses or suspects. Even then, he really only smooth-talked to approach people, and wasn't trusted to do the dirty work. A little after, he got teamed up with Hunk and Pidge to go spying on a fleet of a new an unidentified alien species in its most domestic terrain (which felt invasive), but he only managed the time for being in such places and covering up their spying by trying to talk to people if their mask was blown. He got used to Hunk's loving personality and loved it the most, but after the new year they were mostly separated– everyone attending to their own tasks.

When did he ever get a task for himself?

An _important_ one?

—

Opening a new spreadsheet on his dual monitors, Lance aimlessly typed random numerals at the screen to test out a unique feature of an application, that mapped all USI known points in the universe based on an estimated mapping scale. There were so many recorded over decades, in fact, that you could type the number ‘8’ and at least ten thousand different results would show up, and this wasn’t even a hyperbole. Lance squinted at the screen and almost lost his mind at all the results coming up for keywords to match ‘human suitable atmosphere’, resulting in a few thousand all not too far away from Walters.

He fixed the phone he had at his desk, pulling the chords a bit to exercise the currents (it was an old ass phone) and dialled the number one of his coworkers, Allura. He tapped nervously on his table awaiting an answer. Finally–

“What is it, layabout?”

“Fuck off,” Lance spat. “I try. Also, how the fuck am I supposed to find where’s next for our ship? There are way too many results for a man alone. I’m _one person_ , Allura. This is something for a team.”

“Well,” she started, “you could try, I don’t know, survey the results? Like look at their recorded data and status? Duh.”

“Are you serious? You want me to individually survey hundreds upon thousands of results. Oh, yeah, okay, I’ll get that done in a day by myself, of course.”

“No, I– well yeah, that is a lot, isn’t it? If you really did try out for this unit all those months ago, you would have known how to do it quickly.”

Lance thought hard at this– what the fuck did flying through asteroid pits and being mindly well-collected have anything to do with reviewing planets scattered across galaxies on whether or not they were fit for humans to live on, regardless of whether or not the humans would even step outside the ship?

After a minute or so of silence, Allura spoke again. “You just search for some keywords, Lance,” she sighed. “If you’ve done your research, you’d have known what to do from there.”

Right about when he was about to slam the phone back down, a bell rang, and following it was the serene quiet disturbed minutely only by the sound of buckles on book bags clicking closed, and the shifting of clothes as his officemates got up to go down for lunch.

It was a dumb thing, really, to have bells be rung for recess. What were they, highschoolers? Man, he wished.

Lance looked back to his phone after the blaring bell, and saw that Allura had already hung up. He got up and looked around the room, and saw that Hunk was still sitting at his table. He walked over to his direction, and calmly flung his arm around his shoulder. Hunk only laughed a little in response, not feeling perturbed in any way. They were close friends, after all. Lance pressed his cheek to Hunk’s and smiled wide– “How’re you doing? It’s been like, what, two weeks since we last talked? And we’re so close.”

“So close, and so far away,” Hunk added. “We haven’t been assigned anything together, and so from there, there isn’t much to question.” He slightly pushed Lance to the side to bend over and search through his bag for something that Lance couldn’t really get around.

“What’re you looking for?”

“Right,” Hunk breathed. “I’m not going down for food because I brought some of my own. I’m gonna go microwave it in a bit, because it’s kinda fucking gross.”

“Oh, come on,” Lance began, “there’s no way anything Hunk Garett makes could be gross. Any title degrading of food belongs explicitly to Kogane’s disgusting attempts at cooking.”

“About that,” Hunk said, pulling out a covered, non-translucent Tupperware, “what’s with you and referring to everyone but Allura and I formally? We’ve all been working together since the dawn of last autumn. We should all know each other, like, tight– by now.”

“I don’t know,” Lance sighed, pulling away and slanting tiredly on the wall of Hunk’s cubicle. “I guess I’m just a little scared. No, not scared– not intimidated– maybe just unconfident? Allura’s like, my sister, and you’re probably the only one here that wouldn’t throw me into an enemy fleet to catch a ride back home.” Hunk chortled, his right-hand grip on the Tupperware tightening, as he used his other hand to help himself out his chair. He was walking to the lounge right by their room and paused in his tracks to turn around and ask,

_“What home?”_

––

Hunk came back with a steaming hot plate of Earth-curry. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t smell like shit, and Lance was almost intrigued enough to try it, even after convincing himself it was dumb because of two fundamental truths– the first being that Hunk deserved every bit of homemade lunch he had, and the second being that the curry (that smelled like the spicy, juicy virtues of God’s cooking) was months old and had only been reheated, if anything, to be edible. After sitting back at his table, Hunk popped a piece of wet chicken in his mouth and hummed to himself. “It tastes alright,” he commented.

“Really, now?”

“I’m serious,” Hunk pursued, “but hey, more for me then.”

Lance looked lovingly at his friend enjoying his meal, almost biologically dismissing the fact that he was starving. His eating habits _had_ gotten worse, and he _did_ skip meals often on work days. He looked at the time– they still had about an hour or so of break, and he swivelled his way out of Hunk’s cubicle space. “I’ll see ya around,” Lance said, making his way for the door. Hunk smiled softly, even almost sad that he knew that the two would still only barely talk over the next few months– but he dealt with it.

––

 _First time in a while I’ve eaten in the day_ , Lance thought to himself. Sliding open the canteen door, he saw quite a few other staff members than the ones he had grown accustomed to in his office room– there were various members that worked at the canteen itself, some were interviewers or helpers that were natives of Walters, and there were also numerous detective agents that were onboard. Lance felt like he was going to vomit. He felt so out of place in a room where everyone could be awarded for whatever they did, simply because in anyone’s eyes they’d be doing what they do great. Lance felt he was incompetent, and almost left the room out of spite. Instead, he heard a voice call for him, and decided to sit next to the kind person who had called.

“Mcclain,” he had called. Lance followed the voice, and only the voice– he was getting so sick his vision sprung into a hazy phase.

“Kogane?” Lance asked, head down on the table he sat at, only inches apart from Keith. “I don’t know– I didn’t know that you’d be eating here. You’re usually at the training deck during recess, right?”

Keith laughed. “You don’t know that. You sulk at your cubicle all throughout break-times,” he started. He shifted closer to Lance to pat him on the back, and following that was a minute’s silence that was dark and grey. If someone were to pity Keith or Lance alone, it would be a shame– they were both feeling extremely down. “I’m perplexed. You would never come here. That’s… what I meant, really.”

“Kogane,” Lance murmured, “do I really sulk all the time? And if I do, if I really _do_ sulk and am barely aware of it, do I do it noticeably? Manifestly? Loudly?”

“You’re not in good shape,” Keith said, rubbing Lance’s back, feeling scars and a bony frame under his white shirt, “and that’s probably why you sulk so much. You don’t sulk all the time. You’re a good worker. It’s just– sometimes it gets to me, you know? Like, wow, the guy that’s never called up for temporary custody gets sad a lot. Before you came, I didn’t even know that could be possible.”

“Custody?”

“Custody,” Keith said, holding Lance’s head down. Lance was so tired he could have just slept on the spot, but Keith was trying to talk to him, so he at least had the respect to try and filter out the loud footsteps and sounds of clashing utensils to hear him. “When someone fucks up a system or a training regime really bad, or corrupts a team, or abuses their power, they’re sent to custody, and it’s like… temporary imprisonment. There was a time people hated this management _so much_ that they kept score until they were permanently vanished and banned.

“Harsh,” Lance yawned. His stomach gurgled like mad, and Keith’s face scrunched up in concern.

“It’s the first time we’ve talked in a few months, huh?” Keith recalled, getting out of his seat and heading towards the buffet. “I’ll get you your food. Don’t move.”

Lance pouted under his arms and gave up, finally submitting his whole being to the sweet release of rest. He napped for five peaceful and fulfilling minutes, and within those five minutes, he dreamed of something confusing but all the more realistic.

_"But do you really want me to do this?" Shiro asked, his breath so heavy his shoulder pads almost lost shape. "There's no reason to, really."_

_"Yes, I want you to do this," Lance said, words coming out inept and confusing, "I want you to fire me."_

_Shiro squinted in bewilderment before planting his face in his hands._

“Earth to– fuck, fuck, no– Walters to Lance, Walters to Lance!”

“Fuck, I’m sorry! Thank– Thank you, Kogane,” Lance said hesitantly, looking at the tray of assorted food goo placed in front of him. He looked at Keith, who was staring down at the tray as if his eyes were demanding that Lance feed himself, and his heart almost begged the man to insult him. It felt so inappropriate in any depressing and dull situation that Lance was being given food, advice, and even physical company.

“No problem.”

Lance poked at the goo, knowing that it would taste as good as any type of food goo he’d tasted before, but knowing that he felt like he didn’t deserve any of it. Looking at it made him feel like he was committing a crime. Fingers trembling as they gripped a fork, he jabbed at the goo and stuffed his mouth full of one huge piece. He ended up eating all of it, though, and felt like barfing afterwards. He asked Keith to accompany him to the toilet, and Keith concurred with a nod. Lance was so relieved he almost felt his limbs go numb– _good, so I’m not weird for that, at least._

––

After locking himself in a stall, Lance tried to squat near the toilet bowl, but his legs were so shaky that he gave up and kneeled instead. A bit worried, Keith called for him from outside of the stall near the sinks, asking what was wrong, but Lance answered with the generic “I’m fine” to hopefully stir Keith away from even getting close to thinking about Lance’s mental fuck-ups.

He clenched his left fist and stuck a single finger down his throat, pressing it to the back of his tunnel– it began with nothing. At two fingers, his stomach was starting to churn wildly again, which meant he was so close to gagging– and at three, he let it all out. He stretched his legs to let his left palm get a hold of the flushing lever, and he pulled down the lever so hard the people pissing in other stalls were helplessly bothered. Lance looked down at his stinky ath finger, covered in saliva, and was about to gag and puke again when he noticed that there were absolutely no rolls of tissue in his stalls. He brushed it off and walked out his stall with a smelling finger and a stomach inflating and deflating rapidly as he was holding back stomach gags.

Whilst washing his hands at the sink next to Keith leaning on a mirror wall, Lance appreciated the tranquility of the sound of quiet water rising and draining in a sink. Being that there was no one else in the toilet, other than the sounds of running water or filtered water, the room was practically dead silent. Lance turned to Keith and sighed heavily, looking left nervously.

“Hey,” he started, “ _Kogane_ , should I get myself fired?”


End file.
